Corruption
by xXHeart of GoldXx
Summary: Amanda never thought she'd have to visit her daughter in an asylum. Takes place after Ending B. Also can be seen as the same universe as a previous story titled Daddy's Girl, but can be a stand-alone story as well.
I clutched my purse close to me as I followed the nurse down the long corridor. I was never one to scare easily, but when I heard continuous wailing I couldn't control myself and I shook with fear. My eyes went wide when I jumped as I went further into the building. I heard uncontrollable laughter. No, they were cackles. Someone was literally cackling madly. As I approached the cackling, I couldn't help but look at the naked person behind bars. She stood there and reached out for me and I was glad I held the purse close to me. Her hair was oily and uncombed, her nails untrimmed. She seemed to be at least forty years old; however, I could have been wrong since she could have been younger. But definitely not older.

The nurse gave me a reassuring smile, her thin lips curving upward. She put on bright red lipstick which hadn't seemed to be the right color for her. She wore her hair in a tight bun underneath the nurse's cap. Her eyes were warm and expressive when she spoke words I wasn't even listening to. Her slightly chubby frame was hidden beneath the nurse's uniform she was forced to wear and her shoes were those hideous white sneakers all nurses seemed to wear because they were comfortable and they didn't want blisters.

She told me we were almost there. I wasn't ready, but I don't think I ever would be. I continued forward, albeit less confidently after the nurse pushed me against the wall as a person, male this time, was running through the halls and had his teeth bared like a wolf. Armed guards were tailing him and I watched as he was tackled to the ground. He howled and struggled to get up until a doctor quickly knelt beside him and jabbed a needle in his arm.

The nurse apologized. I kept calling her the nurse inside of my head because I already forgot her name. There had been a time in my life where I wouldn't have cared, but at that moment in time I felt like an asshole for it. She assured me everything was okay and that the man who I just saw wasn't usually like that and he was just upset about something and reacted to it during his therapy.

I nodded and was too horrified at my surroundings to respond. I had never been in a place like this before and I didn't like it. I wish we were just there, but the maze just kept going and I continued to hear wailing, screaming, and the faint cackling every so often. I asked her why people were wailing and she just said that's what they do here and they couldn't stop it; the patients couldn't help it. I bit my lip and wish I hadn't because I tasted my raspberry colored lipstick.

The nurse finally told me we were there. I stood in front of the locked door and wondered why they looked like prison doors, but then I remembered the man who ran down the hallway and the cackling woman and didn't think about it again. The nurse took out her card and swiped it, entering a nine digit pin I didn't pay attention to. The door opened with a click and she allowed me inside.

I stepped in and saw my daughter sitting on the bed, chained to it by her wrists which the nurse said was for my safety. I was supposed to meet her in the common room where patients were able to see their family members, but they said my daughter was having a bad day and didn't want to leave her room again. I wondered how often this happened.

When she looked at me, I didn't think she recognized me. Her eyes darted back and forth wildly and she began to cry. "Tracey," I said gently like I used to back when she was a child. "It's me. It's your mom," I told her in case she forgot. The girl with damaged brown hair because of all of the bleaching and dyeing it blonde in the past tilted her head at me in confusion. She then pulled at her hair, twisting it around her fingers. I watched as the nurse detangled Tracey's hair from her own fingers. The nurse talked to her as if she was a little girl and tied her hair back in a ponytail so she wouldn't do it again. Her hair was still uncombed.

The nurse told me she didn't make sense when she spoke so I wouldn't be shocked if she started to babble about nothing. The second time she looked at me, it seemed like she recognized me and she reached out to me, but the restraints held her back. I finally sat down on the chair hesitantly. I was just out of her reach as she grasped at me. She started to whimper and I couldn't believe this was my daughter. I had to be in the wrong room.

The nurse told me not to be afraid. I nodded more confidently than I felt. I put my purse down on the floor and held my hand out to the woman desperate for my touch. She grabbed my hand and held it awkwardly. Her nails were short so I didn't have to worry about any scratches. As she happily played with my hand, I thought about how she could have gotten this bad.

Tracey had never showed any signs of mental disabilities as far as I knew. That was until I finally understood her bulimia was considered a mental disability, but that didn't make her insane. Maybe I should have taken it more seriously back when she was a teenager. Her late father and I hadn't been too sympathetic. But how were we supposed to know? Bulimia was common among strippers back in North Yankton where I came from. I hadn't shoved a finger down my throat, but a lot of other girls did. Nobody said they had a mental disability, though. It was more thought of as part of the job. Nobody was diagnosed with bulimia; they just puked after they ate.

However, I didn't think this bulimia would have made her like this. She also got into some drugs which I hadn't paid attention to like I good mother should have. She wasn't addicted as far as I knew; she just did them at parties. I just did drugs at parties back when I was young, so I didn't think much of it. Her father had been too busy moping outside on the patio to notice anything. So, it was my fault. The drugs may have played around with her brain chemistry causing something like this to happen- whatever this was.

"I missed you, Tracey," I said to her even if she didn't understand a word that came out of my mouth. I almost asked her how she was, but remembered she didn't always reply to people anymore. "Jimmy told me he visits you a lot. You must like that, huh?" I could have sworn I saw her scrunch her nose up at the mention of her younger brother; that would have been a reaction that I would have deemed normal. I didn't want to get my hopes up, though, so I didn't voice this to the nurse. She'd probably tell me Tracey did that a lot and there wasn't a common trigger for it.

She continued to play with my hand. I remembered when she wanted to get her life together and decided to go to college. I had been so proud of her. When I called Michael one night and mentioned the good news to him, he was ecstatic! We were proud of her wanting to do something with her life. When she signed up for classes, Jimmy began looking for a job. She had been a good influence for once in her life and I was so proud. She could have been the first college graduate in the entire family!

But when we got news Michael had been killed that same night, Tracey still attended college but hadn't been excited about it anymore. She completely shut down after that. I should have gotten her therapy, but I was mourning and too self-absorbed to notice my little girl. Her bulimia came back full force this time. She was constantly in the bathroom trying to make herself throw up. Jimmy tried talking to me about it and he had been easily frustrated with me. He didn't have time to mourn his father's death because he was too busy comforting me and holding Tracey's hair back when he found her in the bathroom.

Tracey had tears in her eyes when she held my hand. I didn't understand why and neither did the nurse. She said Tracey would sometimes get emotional and today was one of those days. I could tell she wanted me to hold her. I looked behind me as the nurse stood off to the side for the visitation. The nurse nodded and assured me it was okay to sit beside her on the bed. I stood up on shaky knees before a lowered myself onto the bed and sat beside my daughter who smelled like a fresh bar of soap. She must have had a bath earlier. Although she didn't look at me sitting beside her, she whimpered and her breathing became erratic as more tears fell down her cheeks. I carefully wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

Tracey began to become withdrawn and only left the house to go to class. She hadn't been happy when I put the house up for sale, but there wasn't anything she could do about it. Perhaps I should have listened to her when she still spoke to me. I was too wrapped up in my own self-pity to notice her changes. I noticed them now, but it was just too late. The two of us would get into verbal arguments frequently and they'd turn into screaming matches. Jimmy never stuck around for those and I think he picked up more shifts at work so he didn't have to be home with his dysfunctional mother and sister.

Tracey had come home one night with a gun in her hand; it had been Michael's pistol. I gasped when I saw it as I thought I had gotten rid of it. It didn't take long for the police to show up at the door. She smirked when they came in and accused her of shooting and murdering two men, one of which was an officer. They handcuffed her and she didn't resist. She looked at me and smirked when she said she did kill them and she'd do it again if she was given the chance. I gasped and almost fainted when I saw the same glint in her eyes that Michael had when he killed. The only difference was Michael would feel bad about it later. Tracey did not.

Tracey had been diagnosed with having antisocial personality disorder. They asked me if she showed any of the symptoms they had listed when she was a teenager or younger. I nodded and was shocked how much of the criteria she met back before all of this. She constantly lied about things, whether big or small. She had deceived authority figures many times. She was incredibly irresponsible when it came to money and she had started fights at school on a number of occasions which had landed her multiple suspensions and detentions depending on the severity of the fight. She was rather impulsive and never thought about the consequences and she never felt guilty about anything. Apparently, she didn't feel any guilt after she killed those men. Therefore, they decided an asylum would be the best fit for her and not prison. I was actually thankful she wasn't going to prison and I preferred the asylum option.

I had been so disappointed in her I hadn't seen her since court. Jimmy told me she had been diagnosed as a sociopath not long after her admission into Los Santos' only asylum. He explained to me the doctor said she probably hadn't been born this way as sociopaths tended to be products of their poor home life. He asked me if Tracey had ever experienced any childhood traumas. There weren't any that I knew of, but Jimmy then explained their upbringing was broken and that could have triggered that disaster. It probably didn't help she had seen her father kill people without a second thought. But she wondered why Jimmy was still stable.

Tracey leaned herself into me and continued to cry. Something inside her broke a couple of years ago and I needed to know what. However, it was too late to ask questions now. "I'm sorry, baby," I whispered to her and hugged her close. Tracey felt too thin and a noted how her breasts no longer had implants in them. Had the doctors taken them out? I asked the nurse and she said they had since they felt it wasn't safe for her as she could rupture them or be unable to maintain them in the future.

"Mama," I thought I heard Tracey mutter. I had been so selfish. It had been three years since I saw my daughter. Three fucking years. The only reason why I came to see her was because of my son who apparently stepped it up when I failed to care about my own daughter.

In that court room, it had been easy to believe she had some disorder and when the asylum said she was a sociopath, I had no issues picturing it. But when Jimmy said Tracey barely spoke words anymore and had descended into a deep hole nobody knew existed, I didn't believe him. She hadn't been allowed visitors for sixteen months. Within that sixteen months, Jimmy said, something inside Tracey broke. Whatever little mental stability she had collapsed and doctors didn't know why it happened.

"Mommy's right here," I said to her as if she was a child. "I'm moving back to Los Santos so I'll be able to see you a lot now." I had moved back to North Yankton after I sold the house. I was currently staying with Jimmy as I looked for a new place. He didn't come with me to see Tracey because he said I needed alone time with her and he'd come in the room after me.

"G-go home?" she stuttered and a noticed her speech was delayed. Tracey had never stuttered before and I gave the nurse a worried look.

"Why is she stuttering?" I asked and the nurse just smiled brightly at me and said it was part of her mental illness. I turned back towards Tracey and her blue eyes looked right at me expectantly, as if she was a small child waiting to see whether or not I would let her have a cookie before dinner. I looked back at the nurse. "Why is her speech delayed?" She replied with the same thing. "But she's never been like this." She simply said Tracey's condition was delayed itself and I was lucky it happened while she was there rather than at home and having a mental breakdown where there were razors and knives and unsafe things where she could have hurt herself. At least here, she said, Tracey was in a safe environment and I wondered if that meant she was handcuffed to the bed.

"Go…h-home?" Tracey asked again and looked at me with that same face.

"I'm sorry," I said to her and the hopefulness on her face vanished. Apparently, she was more aware than I thought. I was almost wishing she wasn't aware of anything that was happening. It would have been easier for me since I had neglected to come see her after her horrid crime. But it was hard to picture she had done that and that this was the same person in the court room that felt no remorse as to what she had done. "I can't bring you home."

Tracey tried to form words, but she had been unable to and she shrieked in frustration. The nurse told me she was starting to have a fit and told me to leave. I didn't want to leave, but she was ushering me out of the room and I couldn't do anything about it even though I protested. She threatened to get security, so I decided it wasn't worth that. Tracey was pulling harshly against her restraints as the nurse shut the door and began to lead me out of the asylum.

When I arrived in the waiting room, I saw my son who was sitting there reading a magazine. He put it down when the nurse and I stood near him and the nurse explained Tracey had a fit and he would have to come back another day. Jimmy had glared at the nurse when she left. I was confused, but let it go. The look he had given her was one of Michael's trademark glares like when he knew something wasn't right. I shook off the awful feeling that something was wrong in that place. After all, Tracey had murdered people and felt nothing after she did it. Didn't she deserve whatever treatment she got here?

I decided not to think about the scar that had been near her hairline.

* * *

I never write in first person, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Also, I wanted to practice describing things more which is why there isn't a lot of dialogue. I have no idea why I decided not to give the nurse any actual lines (only giving them to Tracey and Amanda), but I thought it made it more eerie. Did it work? Please leave your comments or any interpretations in a review or PM :)

I have no idea why I like the idea of Tracey going crazy after Michael's death...


End file.
